NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks followed France higher on Monday as financial markets around the world continued to be volatile in the wake of the election.
The S&P 500 rose 0.2% to start a brief four-day week that included the Independence Day holiday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 227 points, or 0.6%, as of 9:40 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq Composite Index was up 0.1%.
The strongest performances came across the Atlantic, where the CAC 40 index in Paris rose 2.8% before settling to a 1.9% gain. France’s far-right party may not win a supermajority in parliamentary elections, meaning it may be able to avoid one of the worst-case scenarios for financial markets, where a far-right victory could lead to policies that would significantly increase the French government’s debt and other problems.
This is a crucial election year around the world, with voters heading to polling stations in the UK later this week and soon elsewhere. In the US, pollsters are gauging the impact of last week’s debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. All of this highlights “the polarization of politics and how elections drive the economy, not the other way around,” according to Nick Gentle and others in Barclays’ product management group.
In the Treasury market, Treasury yields rose, signaling less pressure on investors to place their bets in the safest U.S. Treasury securities. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 4.43% from Friday’s close of 4.39%.
Yields have been trending lower overall since the 10-year Treasury yield rose above 4.70% in late April, raising hopes that inflation will slow enough for the Federal Reserve to cut its key interest rate from its highest level in more than two decades later this year. High interest rates make borrowing for everything from homes to cars more expensive, slowing the U.S. economy.
On Wall Street, Chewy shares rose 5.7% after widely followed trader Keith Gill revealed he owns just over 9 million shares of the pet-supply company, representing about 6.6% of the company’s total stock, according to a filing Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Gill rose to fame during the meme-stock boom that saw GameStop shares soar to market-shaking heights in 2020. All the while, he became the fan face driving GameStop’s stock higher. Gill spoke out about the stock again recently, helping to drive the stock higher. But after Gill’s revelations about Chewy, the stock fell 6.4% on Monday.
Meanwhile, on Wall Street, shares of Spirit AeroSystems rose 4.4 percent after Boeing said it would buy the maker of aircraft fuselages and other parts for $4.7 billion in stock and assume about $3.6 billion in debt.
Boeing, which rose 3.3 percent, has been under intense scrutiny from governments and airlines that buy its planes over safety and quality concerns. Boeing formerly owned Spirit Airlines, and the acquisition would reverse the company’s longstanding strategy of outsourcing key operations on passenger planes.
Meta Platforms shares fell 0.3% after European Union regulators accused the company of violating the EU’s new digital competition rulebook by forcing Facebook and Instagram users to choose between seeing ads or paying to avoid them.
In overseas stock markets, the Nikkei average rose 0.1% after the Bank of Japan’s quarterly Tankan survey showed a slight improvement in business confidence among Japan’s major manufacturers in the April-June period.
However, the government revised down its growth forecast for the first quarter of this year from minus 1.8% to an annualized minus 2.9%.
The Shanghai stock market rose 0.9% after mixed data on China’s economy, the world’s second-largest, with a factory purchasing managers’ survey released over the weekend showing the economy contracting for a second straight month.
However, a similar survey of private manufacturing activity released on Monday showed conditions were improving.
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AP writers Matt Ott and Jimmo Zhong contributed.
